Hover over a circle (or tap on mobile) to see that country’s total net migration between 2010 and 2015.

Click a circle (or tap the bubble twice on mobile) to view only the migration flows in and out of that country.

Zoom in to see the migration between countries in the E.U..

Net migration flows in and out of the European Union (2010-2015)

After posting a map a few days ago showing which countries in the E.U. have the most citizens living abroad, a number of people reached out with suggestions for other ways of slicing the E.U.’s immigration data: Which countries have the largest immigrant population? How fast is each country’s immigrant population growing? How do the number’s look per capita?

The map above shows the net migration flows in and out of the E.U. over the last five years. By selecting a country (clicking or double tapping on mobile) you can see the details of where that country’s immigrants (incoming foreigners) are coming from and where its emigrants (outgoing citizens) are going.

You can also see how fast each country’s foreign-born population is growing / shrinking, which is represented by the size and color of the bubbles (blue = growing / red = shrinking).

As it relates to the United Kingdom (and the Brexit), though the U.K.’s immigrant population is not the largest in the E.U. (shown further below), it is the fastest growing.

Of all the countries, the one that jumps out to me as the most interesting is Spain. Its population has the same percentage of foreign-born people as the U.K.’s (13%), so at one time it was an attractive place for immigrating foreigners. Currently, it is Europe’s second biggest net exporter of people.

However, more interesting than the number of people leaving Spain are the countries where those people are going: Bolivia, Ecuador, Morocco.

These are not the countries you normally associate with economic opportunity, at least not compared to Europe. It goes to show the pattern does not always follow the “poor country immigrates to rich country” stereotype.

British dispora

1.4 million Brits live in other E.U. countries, predominantly Spain, Ireland, France, and Germany, as shown in the map.

The remaining Britons that live outside the E.U. are concentrated in four countries, all former colonies: Australia (1.2 million), the United States (700k), Canada (600k), and South Africa (300k).

Citizens living abroad as a % of domestic population

These are the per capita figures for the map I posted the other day. Though the U.K. has the largest population living abroad in absolute terms, on a per capita basis it is only slightly above the E.U.-wide average of 7%.

Foreign-born population as a % of total population

This map deals with the other side of the migration equation, the percentage of each country’s population that is foreign-born.

Overall, 11% of the people living the E.U. were born somewhere other than the country where they currently reside. Of those, about 60% were born outside the E.U. and 40% come from a different country within the E.U.

Foreign-born population

Here are the numbers from the map above, shown in absolute terms. The three biggest countries (Germany, France, and the U.K.) account for about half (52%) of the E.U.’s foreign-born residents (vs. 42% of the E.U.’s overall population).

I'm an NYC-based entrepreneur (my newest project: Blueshift) and adjunct instructor at UPenn. I'm fascinated by data visualization and the ways that data is transforming our understanding of the world. I spend a lot of time with my face buried in Excel, and when I find something interesting I write about it here and also as a Guardian Cities and Huffington Post contributor.More about my background

great maps! I wish there was a lot more of this stuff around during the build up to the referendum… Do you know where there’s is data on EU immigrants and where they live in the UK?I suspect that LOndon has the lion’s share but finding it hard to track down…

thanks Max. I hope i have some time to do it but i wanted to compare the amount of EU nationals against the vote to stay in. Oddly i have a feeling places with more non nationals were pro stay…

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

I think you’re probably right. This map doesn’t show the exact figures, but it’s clear the cities are were most foreign residents live. http://maps.cdrc.ac.uk/#/metrics/countryofbirth/
If I remember correctly, the stay vote was also concentrated in the cities.

Jose Garcia-Romeu

During the housing bubble Spain received literally millions of inmigrants, and people from Ecuador, Bolivia and Morocco were the most significant. When the Spanish economy turned to bitter many of these inmigrants returned to their home country. Latam nationals can easily obtain Spanish nationality not waiving the former nationality. This is why apparently Spaniards are migrating. But they are not. Spanish born nationals are migrating, but in very modest numbers.